


The (First) Last Job

by Depseudemonas



Series: Dream Team AU [1]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Girlfriends/No Wives, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Dream heist, Dying In Dreams, M/M, Major Character Injury, Not Really Character Death, Partners in Crime, Setting-Typical Violence, To Be Continued, Violence, dream theft, knowledge of inception not really required
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25450336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Depseudemonas/pseuds/Depseudemonas
Summary: It’s been years since Rhett dreamed naturally.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Series: Dream Team AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843363
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	The (First) Last Job

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first in a series of oneshots in this AU setting, hopefully! I've tried to write it so that little to no knowledge of the movie is required, but feel free to drop me a DM or comment if I've not explained something vital (I'm a bit obsessed with Inception, and never mind talking about it).
> 
> For those unfamiliar with the setting, there is a slight content warning at the bottom of the fic. Search for *** if you're concerned about triggers.
> 
> This is (almost) entirely Bowyer's fault.

_ “Bo, d’you think it’s possible to share a dream?” Rhett asked one afternoon as they forged the Cape Fear, waist deep in the cold water. “What if the you in my dreams is the  _ actual _ you?” _

_ “But last night you dreamt we were kayaking,” Link pointed out. “And I dreamt Lucas Stiller was chasing me through the woods tryna axe-murder me for ruining his science fair project back in fifth grade.” _

_ Rhett nodded reluctantly, but still sought out Link in his dreams. _

It’s been years since Rhett dreamed naturally. In a way that’s a relief – no more nightmares, no more anxiety dreams where he’s back in college and in class suddenly naked.

On the other hand, it means he doesn’t get the excuse to dream freely about Link any more, and that’s a damn shame. The old excuse went something like: ‘ _ Well, I can’t help that my subconscious made me have a sex dream about my best friend. Brains are weird, man. _ ’

Now, Rhett only ever chooses what he dreams. He shares them with other dreamers. When Link appears, he’s only ever the real thing.

Take right now, for example:

“Watch it!” Rhett says, because even in dreams Link is clumsy.

The glass drops from the table before either of them can catch it and red wine splashes across the white carpet of their mark’s penthouse apartment.

“Aw crap,” Link says. “Hang on.” He grabs another bottle – white wine, this one – and Rhett doesn’t tell him that pouring white to get rid of a red stain is an old wives’ tale and doesn’t work. Instead, the wine fizzes improbably, and when Link wipes it with a towel there is no stain.

Dream logic. Dream  _ Link _ logic. They’re hanging out in his mind, after all.

When they were kids, Rhett had been obsessed with dreams, and so Link had been too. That was how they’d worked – where Rhett led, Link happily followed, and they’d both kept dream journals at his insistence. 

By the time they were fifteen, Rhett had mastered lucid dreaming. Link never did, but he always seemed happy to listen as Rhett recounted the adventures they went on at night in Rhett’s head.

Now, Link goes to the floor-to-ceiling window of the apartment and looks out at the city below. Rhett has designed it in stylish monochrome to suit the tastes of their subject. Far below, Link’s projections mill around the tight maze of narrow streets.

“Nice,” Link says. “You’ve outdone yourself, buddy. This job is gonna go so smooth.”

They’ve been working together for years, but Rhett still gets a warm rush whenever Link says something like that. He’s grown more liberal with his praise over the years; where once Rhett used to have to hoard praises like precious gems, his pockets now overflow.

He shrugs. “It could be better. Still something missing from the general feel of it. I dunno.”

“Well, see what Stevie thinks when we do the practice run.” Link looks at the clock on the wall – minimalist, no numbers, suiting the cold barren apartment down to the ground. Back in the warehouse, Rhett’s work surface is piled with catalogues designed to sell lots of stuff to people who claim to be minimalists.

“Man,” he says. “I thought we’d need longer. We’ve still got an hour before the timer.”

Rhett’s stomach sinks – he knows where this is going, and it’s easily his least favourite part of dreaming with Link. 

“I could show you the penrose steps again,” he suggests hopefully, in an effort to distract Link away from ending the dream early. “You need to get to grips with it, man. You can’t run point if you can’t do the simplest paradox in the book.”

Link scowls, the insult to his ability to do his job hitting more accurately than Rhett had meant it to.

“Screw you! I do just fine without it. You know all that Escher crap makes me queasy.”

Any chance of them waiting out the timer to end the dream naturally vanishes in a puff of offence. Link stomps to the door that ultimately leads to the fire escape.

“I’ve got work to do. You coming?”

“I really, really hate this.” But Rhett follows. 

When Link opens the fire door, he lets in all the blustery wind, flecked with rain from the looming black clouds overhead. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Someone forget to use the bathroom before we came down?”

Rhett is deliberately looking at his feet and not at the ground on the other side of the stair rail. Link hoiks his butt up onto it, knuckles too loose around the cold metal bar.

“ _ Link _ .” He knows he sounds whiny, but he doesn’t care. Link knows he hates this, he  _ knows _ .

“You gotta go first,” Link says. “I know you won’t otherwise. You’ll just stand here like a moron until the timer and I won’t get anything done ’cus I’ll be worryin’ about you.”

Gingerly, Rhett joins him on the rail, sitting side-by-side, close enough that their thighs touch.

“Fuck.” His hands are so sweaty he can’t get a good grip. At least he won’t end up dangling.

Link nudges him with his knee, tucking his leg behind Rhett’s own. “On five?”

Rhett nods, tight-lipped. 

“Five,” Link says. “Four …” He yanks his leg up, unbalancing Rhett, who feels his eyes go wide and gravity grab a hold of him. His stomach turns and jerks and he topples backward over the edge to plummet –

– right back into wakefulness, lying on his back on a grotty sun lounger in a disused warehouse, IV link in the crook of his arm and the PASIV device hissing quietly to itself beside his head.

Next to him, Link jerks awake too, making the small surprised noise he always makes, even after five-plus years of dreaming.

Rhett pulls the needle out of his arm. “Asshole!” he snaps at Link, who’s still looking sleepily around. “Why d’you have to do that?”

“Because if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have gone!”

“I would too. You don’t know I wouldn’t.”

Link fumbles at his arm, trying to remove the IV without looking. Rhett normally does it for him, but right now he feels vindictive enough to hope that he faints.

“I gather the test went well, then?” Stevie’s wry voice echoes from the door. She approaches, a steaming mug in each hand and files tucked under her arm.

“It went really well,  _ actually _ ,” Rhett says, sending an evil look Link’s way, which he doesn’t see because he’s still groping for the cannula. “Oh for goodness’ sake.” Rhett slinks to his side, slapping Link’s shaky hands away from the site. He grabs a cotton ball from the tray, pressing it down as he slides the needle from under pale skin. The fumbling has made it bruise, purple blotches spreading from the puncture like ink on wet paper.

“Thanks,” Link mumbles. “You know I hate that.”

“Oh,” Rhett says, “like I hate heights?” 

Link has the decency to look a little ashamed. Rhett’s anger is quickly abating, but he pushes his thumb down harder on the cotton ball, just because. He hears Link’s breath hitch.

Stevie coughs meaningfully, putting the mug down on the crate that’s serving as a coffee table. “It’s probably stopped bleeding now.”

Once upon a time, Rhett would have dropped his arm like it was hot, but he’s grown a lot as a person since those days; once you’ve shared enough weird-ass dreams with a bunch of grown men you get over the internalised homophobia from your upbringing pretty quick. 

“Rhett’s map is perfect,” Link tells her. He’s bigging it up to make up for being an asshole, Rhett tells himself, pretending he doesn’t feel his face heat up. “We’re gonna ace this job, Stevie!”

“Good to hear, but y’know – pride, fall. Counting chickens, all that.” She folds her arms. “Remember Hawaii?” 

Link cringes, hand automatically going to his bad shoulder, tracing his fingers over where the scar sits under his shirt. “Okay, okay, thanks for that  _ reminder _ , Stevie, I totally forgot the time we were sold out and I got shot,  _ thank you _ .”

Rhett notes that he mentions only the physical injury, and not the big shake to his confidence that the incident had caused. Nor the effect it had on their next job, how Rhett had made the executive decision to cancel when Link showed up on four nights of no sleep, determined to prove his reputation as an up-and-coming, one-to-watch point man was still valid.

“This won’t be like Hawaii,” Rhett says. “Because we know that no one’s gonna sell us out this time.” 

Link gives him a grateful smile.

It’s not like Hawaii. In fact, it goes so smoothly that Rhett can’t quite believe it. Their regular chemist Josh’s new compound makes the dream smooth as silk and stable beyond fault. Link’s thorough research makes it easy for him to talk their mark into visualising all the names of his confidential investors as a typed list. A list that, naturally, he thinks into existence in the safe Rhett’s design placed behind a painting in the penthouse.

Rhett enters the combination to the safe, takes out the list and sits on the couch to memorise it, his gun resting on the coffee table, just in case. The couch is softer than its design gave it any right to be – Rhett allowed himself that small unrealistic luxury in design, for his back’s sake. Far below, the mark’s projections wander the streets, trying to find the man they feel ever so subtly manipulating their perceived reality, but struggling to find their way out of his carefully designed maze.

After about half an hour, there’s a rhythmic knock on the apartment door. Secret knock. Rhett doesn’t need to go for his gun.

“What are you doing up here?” Rhett asks. Link shrugs.

“Things took a weird tangent – he started flirting with a projection, and it looked like it was heading in a sex dream direction. And by that, I mean an orgy. Not really my scene.” He grabs a wine bottle, the one that he’d spilled in the test-test run. He pours a glass, but pouts when only water comes out. Rhett gives him an evil grin.

“No drinking on the job.”

“Mean.” Link says. He sits down next to him. “Oooh, that’s  _ nice _ .”

“I figured, with the extra time you built in, we’d have some waiting to do,” Rhett says pointedly, jabbing Link’s ribs with a sharp elbow just to make sure the point definitely hits home. Link rolls his eyes. 

“Look at me, I’m waiting! Right now. Here, on this seat.” He’s fidgeting, shifting around on his butt, crossing and uncrossing his legs. It’s annoying and distracting Rhett from doing his job, so without a thought, he swings his legs up across Link’s lap. The annoying tapping of feet stops.

Rhett returns to making a mnemonic to remember the names – there are a lot of them. He’ll have to write them down fast when they wake up, although his dream journaling and early lucid dreaming experience means that he remembers dreams almost as well as real life.

Link is unusually quiet. Rhett is halfway through a final run of names when he feels strong fingers digging into the meat of his calves.

Link is … massaging his legs. That’s new. They’ve done shoulder rubs on occasion, but this is … this is Link’s long fingers, slowly moving up over his knees and onto his thighs.

He looks up to find Link is staring at him.

“What?” it comes out a little more forceful than he means it too, and Link seems to react, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows hard.

“You gonna stop me?” he asks, voice noticeably lower than usual. His thumb is drawing mazes on Rhett’s thigh. 

Rhett grabs his hand, and he looks visibly disappointed for a moment, until Rhett tugs on it insistently.

“ _ Oh _ ,” Link says, and crawls up the length of him, straddling his hips as Rhett pulls him down for a tentative first kiss.

This has been a long time coming, he thinks. Link laughs against his mouth – maybe he whispered it aloud. 

_ Knock knockknock knock knock. _

Rhett freezes. Link does too, but only for a moment, before he throws himself back to the other end of the couch. 

“What the crap?” the Link in the doorway asks. His words are echoed by the other Link. Sofa Link.

Rhett’s  _ projection _ of Link.

Oh  _ shit. _

It makes sense that Rhett would have a projection of Link bumbling around in his subconscious, honestly. He hasn’t thought about it, but he’s so used to having Link around in his waking life that  _ of course _ his unconscious mind would replicate that.

And now that the  _ real _ Link is here, the one sitting next to Rhett on the sofa is obviously a projection. His haircut, for one, is the longer cut Link was sporting up until a month ago – obviously Rhett’s subconscious has yet to update itself. Small details are off, too, like Rhett’s recreation being a little shorter and the words on his graphic tee begin to fade out of existence when he tries to read them. 

The big problem with this situation, though, is that the projection of Link doesn’t realise he’s not the real thing. By its very nature, as a defender of the mind, a projection is hardwired to seek out intruders in the dream world, and get rid of them. And as far as this projection knows – 

“Link!” Rhett yells in warning, which is absolutely useless in this situation, and dives for his firearm, but the projection beats him to it.

“Get down!” the projection snaps at Rhett, whilst the actual Link yelps and back-pedals desperately into the corridor.

A bullet makes a neat hole in the plaster to the left of the door frame, because apparently Rhett’s projection of Link still has the weapon skills of Link a decade ago. That could be an advantage, because it means he’s less likely to hit his target, but, on the other hand, Link had taken marksmanship classes for a very good reason.

Either way, Rhett isn’t taking chances. If he gets shot in this dream, he’ll just wake up. If a pair of Links cause chaos  _ inside _ the dream, then their mark might realise his mind is being robbed, and things could get dangerous in the real world.

Rhett chases after the projection, who’s making a beeline for the door. He catches up before he gets there and tackles him, making contact with Link’s hips and wrapping his arms around them. They crash to the ground together. This close, the gun discharging is deafening, and makes his ears ring as he struggles to get the projection in some kind of hold. He grabs the wrist of the left hand, the one with the gun, and squeezes until he hears the bones grind and Li – the  _ projection _ of Link cry out in pain. The weapon hits the carpet with a soft thud.

“Stop  _ squirming _ ,” Rhett demands, voice overwhelmingly loud in his own head from temporary deafness, and to his surprise the projection instantly goes limp beneath him.

Too limp. He’d go so far as to call it  _ lifeless _ . 

Rhett loosens his grip experimentally, but the projection doesn’t make a move to escape – doesn’t move at all. Rhett climbs off and turns him over, and nearly vomits when he sees the neat red hole in the perfect centre of Link’s forehead.

Projection or not, it still looks like his best friend.

Rhett scrambles back, barely able to tear his eyes from the body, but when he does it’s to see the real Link standing lopsided in the doorway, gun still pointed at the dead man on the floor. His hands are shaking. He says something, but Rhett’s ears are still ringing too much to hear what.

Link leans on the doorframe as if he needs to to stay upright. Rhett climbs to his feet, and it takes two steps closer for him to note the bloodstain spreading on the black fabric of Link’s t-shirt.

Both of them have died in dreams before. It always sucks. Rhett hasn’t had the pleasure of a gutshot specifically, but he’s willing to bet it sucks more than average. 

“I’d ask you to put me out of my misery,” Link says, sounding breathless, “but we both know you won’t.”

Rhett approaches him, grabbing his upper arm to steady him as he sways.

“Ohshit, Rhett, this  _ hurts _ .”

Every instinct is screaming for him to start first aid, do  _ something,  _ but there’s no point, not in this dream. “I’m sorry.”

“What the hell was – no. Talk later. I’ll be more pissed when I’m not –” he breaks off to gasp in a breath, then squeezes his eyes shut, shaking Rhett’s anxious hand off of him. “Go finish memorising the info. We’re not fucking this up any further.”

“What about you?” Something tells him he won’t be able to concentrate with his bes – his  _ Link _ slowly bleeding out in the same room.

“Fire escape,” Link grunts. 

They’ve worked with people who were more desensitised to the dreaming world, who didn’t bat an eye when they had to shoot themselves out of a dream. Maybe that would be them in ten years, but not now. 

“See you on the other side,” he says as Link leaves the room.

He doesn’t get an answer.

He stays in the dream, memorising the notes until the timer runs out. 

When he wakes up, the space on the hotel carpet where Link had been lying beside him is empty. Stevie, unplugging the mark from the PASIV, gives him a tight, sympathetic smile, but nothing else.

Bones aching with exhaustion, Rhett types the names into Stevie’s waiting laptop whilst she tidies, removing every trace of them from the hotel room. When their mark wakes up from his sedation, he’ll have no idea they were there. No idea they stole precious information from his mind. Information that Stevie has been offered a considerable sum of money to procure.

Rhett finishes and closes the laptop. He hands it over and doesn’t even need to ask.

“He said to wire him his share,” Stevie says. “I’m not gonna ask what happened down there, ’cus it’s none of my business and the job got done. But I think it’s safe to say you fucked up.”

“Thanks for that,” Rhett says. Stevie has never been afraid to call anyone on their shit, which is what makes her such a success in the business. Doesn’t mean it’s not annoying, though.

“See you next time,” she says as he leaves the room. “Try and patch things up. You’re a dream team.”

“That pun is bad, and you should feel bad,” Rhett says over his shoulder and closes the door.

He heads to the cheap hotel room he and Link were booked into on the other side of town. Even before he checks in and goes up to their empty room, he knows that Link and his bags are gone.

_ Rhett barged into their dorm room, where Link was cramming for a test he was more than ready for but was still convinced he was going to fail. _

_ “We’re saved!” he announced dramatically, arms opening wide to salute the room. “No more bread sandwiches. No more plasma donating. Link, I’ve found the answer to all our problems.” _

_ ‘The answer’ was a discreet ad on a noticeboard outside the psych department that offered paid positions in a sleep trial. Rumor had it that it was something to do with the military, thus appealing to Rhett’s patriotic urges as well as their desperate need for cash. _

_ “Come on,” he said, when Link hesitated. “Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to worry about getting rent for the apartment next year on top of all the finals stress?” _

_ Link had gone with it, of course, because that was how it worked: where Rhett led, Link happily followed. _

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you enjoyed this! [ I'm on tumblr, so come say hi there if you like](https://erry.tumblr.com/). I'm hoping to make this a series of oneshots, so keep an eye out for the next story.  
> Thanks very much to Bowyer, who inspired this after our yearly rewatch of Inception. She recently wrote some really lovely Rhett angst with a happy ending that I can't rec enough, [ you can find it here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24542965).
> 
> *** Please note that in the Inception setting a way to leave the dream world is by dying, and that this is sometimes self inflicted by the character, and whilst not motivated by suicidal feeling could be potentially triggering. Please don't read this fic if that sort of thing might hurt you! Take care <3


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